2025 Popcorn Frights Film Festival Coverage
The Editing review
Filmmaking can be a life and death situation.
Festival movies will not contain spoilers.
The Editing
Directed by Audouin Rascovsky
Written by Audouin Rascovsky and Louis Berthier-Castello
Starring Reece Mitchell, Karl Kennedy-Williams, James Campbell and Trinidad Gonzales
The Editing Review
Filmmaking can be a maddening process. This isn’t new information. Practically every movie about making movies comes with its share of scenes where someone loses it. The Editing has a bit of that in its mix…but one gets the impression that its in world director lost his marbles long before his directing struggle began. John Von Kubrick (Reece Mitchell) claims to be the descendant of the great Stanley Kubrick. His new movie should be finished by now…and not a moment too soon according to his worried producers. Boris (Karl Kennedy-Williams) and Larry (James Campbell) need to get their hands on that film ASAP. They took a loan from the Yakuza to get it produced and so far have nothing to show for it. There’s just one problem. John (and his movie) have disappeared.
Boris and Larry manage to find John pretty quickly. Well, sort of. John is completely out of his mind by the time they reach him. He claims to be someone else, specifically a doctor, and has no idea where “John’s” footage is. The producers figure out that he buried it in the ground and exhume their only hope to appease the Yakuza. The footage remains intact. This will be the last break that poor Boris and Larry catch for the rest of The Editing.
It took me a bit to get onto The Editing’s strange wavelength. John’s character is pretty dynamic…but it’s a lot to take in cold. Once you warm up to the tone of the movie…it holds a fun rhythm. What makes it all work is the dynamic between the three characters. John is insane. Boris is a serious, desperate man trying (and failing) to work through the problem. Larry is a kind-hearted optimist. The way they play off each other throughout The Editing elevates every scene they share. Which is a great thing since they share pretty much every scene in the movie.
I said there were three characters…but really there are four. John, running his pretend medical practice, has a French patient who follows him around looking for help. He constantly fills the corner of the screen in various levels of pain and dying. It’s funny every time you see him.
Boris and Larry finally get the chance to view the movie they invested money they couldn’t pay back in. Predictably once you’ve gotten one look at John…it’s a disaster. A movie bad enough they might just get killed for it. That’s where the title of the movie, The Editing, comes into play. While John is off (literally) playing doctor…Boris attempts to find anything salvageable in the material. It sounds easy enough…but like I said, Boris and Larry aren’t going to be catching a lot of breaks in this story. They do get to catch a ritual John performs to invoke the spirit of Stanley Kubrick. In case you thought their task was going to be getting easier now that they had their hands on the footage.
With the clock ticking, John actively working against them and a dying Frenchman taking up space…things look bleak. The Editing is all about that dark humor kind of vibe. The three leads play off each other perfectly. It’s oddly funny in spots. Like the in-film project they’re trying to save, The Editing seems to wrestle with how to pull it all together. Unlike John’s mess, The Editing knows where it’s going. It delivers a darkly funny ending that fits its off-kilter story perfectly.
The Editing touches on the madness of filmmaking in a very matter of fact way. When they meet John…he claims to be someone else and that John is dead. That’s how the producers figure out he has buried his film inside the grave he claims to be his own. A part of John died with that film. Now Boris and Larry may die because of it. The French patient seems like he’s going to die at any moment. Film gets to live forever. It’s hard to imagine The Editing coming up with a more fitting comment about filmmaking.
Scare Value
It might take a moment to get onto The Editing‘s rhythm. Once you get there, however, you’ll be treated to a delightfully weird story with a great set of character dynamics. John’s disasterpiece might literally be bad enough to get people killed. They may be able to save it in the edit…but John’s too busy playing doctor to care. A strange little movie that works better the more you choose to meet it on its level. With three distinct character types to choose from…you shouldn’t have much trouble finding your inroad.
